WP, Byron York: Libby jury not allowed to consider question of Plame's covert status

[DeepModem Mom]

What the CIA Leak Case Is About
By Byron York
Saturday, February 17, 2007; Page A31

At the end of each witness's testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, after prosecutors and defense attorneys examined and cross-examined, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton asked jurors to write down any questions they had. Walton would then look through the papers, decide which questions were appropriate and pose them to the witness.

Now, as the case heads to the jury, those queries are our best hints about what jurors are thinking.

But last week there was a moment when we got a hint not from a question that Walton asked, but from one he refused to ask. After the testimony of star prosecution witness Tim Russert, Walton scanned the jurors' queries and announced, "There is going to be one question I'm not going to ask. I've concluded that that question is not appropriate and therefore you should not speculate as to what the response would have been."

What was he talking about? A moment later, Walton told the jurors: "What Mrs. Wilson's status was at the CIA, whether it was covert or not covert, is not something that you're going to hear any evidence presented to you on in this trial."

"Whether she was, or whether she was not, covert is not relevant to the issues you have to decide in this case," he said.

It is The Thing That Cannot Be Spoken at the Libby trial.

From the first day, Walton has said that jurors will not be allowed to know, or even ask, about the status -- covert, classified or otherwise -- of Valerie Plame Wilson, the woman at the heart of the CIA leak case. "You must not consider these matters in your deliberations or speculate or guess about them," he told jurors in his opening instructions....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021601571.html?nav=hcmodule

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

1. I am not happy about it but the case is about perjury and not about

Plame's outing.

What I find appalling is that no one in MSM has mentioned loudly and clearly why outing Plame seems not to be a crime. They have testimony of her being outed and yet no one is being prosecuted for that. I believe its because before she was outed, like the NIE, Plame's covert status was declassified.

[unblock]

2. more likely a much more practical reason: perjury is much easier to prove

[TroglodyteScholar]

3. Yea, this isn't necessarily a bad thing...

In an ideal world, we'd be following a trial about something much more direct-and-to-the-point than perjury/the cover-up...But since this is a perjury trial, Plame's covert status really has no legal bearing. I'm just grateful that there's a trial going on at all, because we actually get some key players UNDER OATH to talk about the roles they played.

[leftofthedial]

4. the repukes (and fitzwhatsisname)

have very carefully made this an inquiry only into the very narrow matter of Libby lying.

It is not about the Plame issue. The bush cabal have gotten clean away with openly committing treason and exposing a covert operation.

Only some repuke being stupid enough to confess to some crime in his or her testimony could open a new avenue of investigation and expand the scope of the case. That won't happen. Anyone found guilty of even the trivial matters being considered will be pardoned in 2008 anyway.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Fitzgerald has clearly established that Plame was covert, and stated, in his

one press conference on this matter (the one announcing Libby's prosecution for perjury and obstruction), that both who the perps are and WHY they outed Plame are a grave matter of national security. Further, it was the CIA who requested the investigation.

When you say that Republicans and Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald have "very carefully narrowed" the "inquiry," you are reversing the truth. Libby is the one who "narrowed" the "inquiry." That is why he is being prosecuted. As Fitzgerald said, he is "throwing dust in the eyes of the umpire." He is OBSTRUCTING the inquiry.

And the inquiry is not over. Fitzgerald has been strongly pointing at a conspiracy, led by Cheney (but personally, I think, was ultimately masterminded by Rumsfeld), in the Libby indictment, in pretrial documents, and in the trial itself. A lot of new items have come out at the trial, pointing at Cheney yet more. I really don't think he's done with this investigation--by any means.

How Fitzgerald works--his record as a prosecutor--is exactly this way. He indicts the underlings for perjury and obstruction, and he is very patient as to nurturing that pressure along, until something cracks open. And I think he is very smart to NOT prosecute on the main crime NOW. Bush could pardon people on the main crime, but not on perjury (or not easily on perjury). (Bush in fact can do anything he wants to. Who's to stop him? I'm talking about what he thinks he can get away with. He's already got a rebellion in the Republican Party on the war.)

Yeah, it's odd that all the people who have ADMITTED to outing Plame either have known deals with Fitzgerald to testify against Libby in the trial, or have deals we don't know about (Rove) to testify behind closed doors to the GJ. But I am not at all ready to dismiss all this as Republican politics, nor to dismiss Fitzgerald as a Republican tool. I just don't think it's true. We all have to make judgments of people in positions of power. Mine of Fitzgerald is that he is very much a straight-shooter. I think he has good reasons for going about this investigation the way he has. For instance, Rove was red herring. He was just a political operative of the outing--whom Libby initially tried to pin it on. But Rove didn't mastermind it. He couldn't have. This was no political rogue act. As Fitzgerald has painstakingly shown, it is a deep conspiracy, generated from the VP's office. He got through the first layer of coverup (Rove did it for political reasons). Now he's at the second layer of coverup (Cheney did it for political reasons.) (I think the inner skin of this onion of coverups is that Rumsfeld did it for STRATEGIC war reasons--because someone in the Brewster-Jennings network had detected and foiled a scheme to PLANT nukes in Iraq, as followup to the Niger/Iraq nuke forgeries).

What I see Fitzgerald doing is batting away Rove, batting away Ari Fleischer and Richard Armitage, batting away Judith Miller and Robert Novak, and--and all the flak they and Libby were spreading around ("everybody knew"), and, like a bulldog, pursuing Dick Cheney.

As for Walton, and the instruction to the jury, he is RIGHT ON. They MUST NOT be distracted by what the main crime was, or who else might be responsible for it. For a perjury/obstruction charge to work, to be upheld, and to put Libby under pressure to give up the main perps, the jury must strictly consider what Libby said under oath. Was it a lie or not? And did his lies and other actions obstruct the investigation? (--which they surely did). (He tried to throw blame off Cheney, by lying about who he heard Plame's identity from.) It's no business of the jury's, really, whether there even was a main crime (--though there surely was, and it was the crime of treason). The investigator, Fitzgerald, was charged with finding out if there was, and if so, who did it. (Was it a political accident? Was it a deliberate conspiracy?) (ALL facts so far point strongly to conspiracy.) But to get this critical conviction for perjury/obstruction, the jury's deliberations must be clean, and the conviction firm against appeal. It DOESN'T MATTER if Plame was covert or not, or even if she was outed, or not. The CIA said she was. They referred it for investigation and prosecution, and Libby LIED in the course of the Special Prosecutor trying to find out the truth.

From what I can see, Fitzgerald was absolutely right to limit this trial to THAT factual situation. It was LIBBY's lawyers who tried to widen the scope! --precisely because they KNEW, if it got all mucked up with Cheney and treason and outing CIA agents and war, Libby would be lost in the shuffle. Libby, one of the main keys to Cheney's guilt, might be forgiven for lying (or have his conviction reversed) BECAUSE OF Cheney's guilt. And thus the chain of pressure would be broken. Libby as victim. (And his lawyers most definitely tried to play that card in their opening statement.)

This is a very, very tangled case, not because what happened is all that unclear, but because of the tangle of lies that were woven around it. Fitzgerald has been brilliant in untangling that web. I do know what dangerous criminals these are, and how they might be manipulating events. ANYBODY could be bought, and ANYBODY could be threatened, with evil men like these in charge. It's my read on it that that has not happened to Fitzgerald and his team, and that it's not over. At minimum, we will have a GJ report naming Cheney as an unindicted co-conspirator (with Fitzgerald throwing the matter to Congress). (Note: In Jefferson's Rules, a grand jury can submit a privileged bill of impeachment to the House, just as a state legislature can. But if Fitzgerald names Cheney, he may not have to go that far.)

The "aspens" may have this one figured out, and have prepared their VP replacement, which MIGHT give whoever it is an advantage in '08. I don't think it will, but that may be their plan. And Cheney may be trying to widen the war in the Middle East to prevent his being dumped. I DO think there is a Bush/Cheney split among the "aspens" (Republican bigwigs), and that this is why: Cheney is guilty of treason (felony outing of a covert CIA agent and an entire covert WMD counter-proliferation network), and Fitzgerald is very close to being able to prove it.

[leftofthedial]

7. time will tell us what Fitzgerald proves

and when

[librechik]

6. perhaps the issue will be raised in the Wilson's civil case

:evilgrin:

[Garbo 2004]

8. Byron York reveals that an "air of accusation" hangs over a defendant in a criminal trial. Really.

Stop the presses.

York and other Libby supporters would like nothing better than to obfuscate the charges with which Libby stands accused: did Libby lie to investigators and the grand jury or didn't he?

As to whether Plame's identity was classified or not, there's no mystery, the answer is yes. If it weren't the CIA would not have turned the matter over to the DOJ for criminal investigation. But the trial is not about that, it's about Libby's perjury and obstruction during the course of the DOJ investigation. Which the jury can decide for themselves based on Libby's grand jury testimony and the testimony of witnesses.

Fitzgerald conducted his case precisely on point and the defense was stuck with it, which is why essentially they presented no defense. All that's left to Libby's defenders is to suggest that it's not fair somehow to charge Libby with repeatedly lying during the course of the investigation when he may have committed a another crime with which he hasn't been charged?

Lame.

[goforit]

9. This trial has been a circus. Treason is the crime to be swept under the rug.

Only in america.

[peacetalksforall]

10. I hope Judge Walton will say what he said a few more times

before the jury leaves to make their decision.

I hope responsible people will call in to WJ or other shows and repeat what this isn't about - because we know it's going to be twisted - the right wing will try to act like everything is now settled and done with.

Naturally, they will try to evade the entire issue on corporate network tv or slide in a simple update. The film they show will be the same old, same old stuff we've seen - carrying the briefcase into the courthouse, carrying the briefcase out of the courthouse, smiling slyly sittig at a table in a Congressional hearing room.

Funny, Cheney hasn't been tried anywhere in a court - yet - but I would guess that millions of people have a preliminary gut belief in his guilt.

I've always written that it was Cheney who had the most interest in taking down Brester-Jennings Assocs (because of nuclear technology/equipment sales). The part about Rumsfeld sharing the interest in shutting down B-J because of the attempt to plant the WMD's - makes sense. And, we know George has his 'screw them all' interest in it.

[Disturbed]

11. Peace Patriot has nailed this tightly.

Five counts of Perjury and one count of Obstruction of Justice. Justice is what is required!